The comic artwork of Ryan Claytor.

As you may know, I’ve been busy illustrating a lot of artwork for our upcoming wedding. One of those pieces of artwork will be our letterpress-printed invitations. In order to make this happen, I needed to get a magnesium plate made of my art, a first for me. After asking around the inner-circle of Michigan print folk, I was told of a mystical place called Owosso Graphic, the largest plate-maker in the United States. With a bit of research, I found out they were ON MY COMMUTE TO WORK!

After chatting with the customer service agents and emailing my illustration files, they asked where I wanted it shipped. In return, I asked if I could come by to pick it up. They told me that would be fine and I stopped by a couple days later at about 4:45pm. The plates looked great, but before I left I told the gal at the counter that I’m a bit of a print-nerd, and wondered if it would be possible to get a quick look at their facilities. She came back with Joe Holden, Tech Support Manager of Owosso Graphic, who gave me a great walking tour in the last fifteen minutes of his workday.

The machines ranged from big to bigger. There were employees engraving plates, trimming jobs, and mounting magnesium. It was pretty exciting! They’re not a print-shop, but they make plates and dies for just about everything from letterpress printing to foil embossing on books. This image below is a plate made for the new corvette cars. The plate will be used to create the embossed piece of plastic mounted on the floor next to the seat that the driver steps over after having his mid-life crisis.

Walking between rooms and machines, I spotted this line-up of a variety of metal plates (copper, magnesium, brass, etc) waiting to be etched.

This is yet another engraving machine (there were many) and you can see how large it was by the scale of the mounted monitor and keyboard. Joe told me that the interior base of the machine is granite. Evidently granite has shock-absorbing properties that keeps the plate from jostling around when receiving very detailed cuts.

This next photo is the largest engraver in the building and it takes up an entire room. It is used to create plates up to 6 feet wide and I think he said up to 20 feet long. (I’m struggling a bit to recall the exact numbers, as the tour was pretty extensive.) This machine is used for gigantic jobs, like making dies to create logo/art on the side of airplanes.

This next room is where a lot of the finishing and plate prepping happens. For example, my magnesium plate needed to be mounted on a piece of wood that is “type-high” so that when it is put into the letterpress machine, it will sit at the right height to get inked and eventually print. Anyhow, lots of employees were bustling about and I got to see more custom foil stamp dies, letterpress plates, and god knows what else. Joe, my tour guide, is the fellow in the white hat. He was bringing me a new inspiring die to gaze upon.

After that it was off to another room with another die-makin’ machine.

These were a couple of plates that were made to “kiss-cut” vinyl. Kiss-cutting is when you cut through the adhesive vinyl, but not through the paper on which it sits. I’m told that these plates are just single-line graphics, but the line is 1/5000 of an inch thick, essentially turning them into little knives. SO COOL!!!

In case you haven’t figured it out by now, this place was HUGE! In fact, it was so big, they had their own water treatment plant. Here it is.

At the end of the tour, Joe showed me a display case with some samples of products that had been crafted using their dies. This is a LETTERPRESS PRINT!!!! I couldn’t believe the number of colors on this piece (I found 8), and all perfectly registered!!! Amazing. Unfortunately I do not know the name of the artist.

As I mentioned before, their dies are used for everything from printing to airplane decals and even bathroom signage.

So, that was the end of my tour. I’d like to extend my sincerest thanks to Owosso Graphic for making some great plates of my work and an especially huge thank you to my tour guide, Joe Holden, for showing me around at the end of his work day.

“So let’s see the Ryan Claytor plate!” you say. Well, I’m gonna keep that and the accompanying product close to my chest until late June or early August. Until then, here’s a teaser of my plate just prior to receiving some inky goodness.

Julie!
That’s great to hear. I couldn’t believe how many different things they were making! I had a really easy and pleasant experience with them. Glad I could share a little tour of their facilities with you. Say hi to Chet for me.
Thanks for stopping by!

Joe was really fantastic, and so is your whole company. I couldn’t be happier with the results I got from your die. I’ll have to send you a copy (after our wedding this summer…just need to be sure we have enough). Ha-ha!